The connections between Richard Hoste and Richard Spencer, and between Richard Hoste and Peter Brimelow

(Note, April 24: Richard Spencer says that the information provided in this thread by the unnamed reader, and also by commenter Michael S., is completely false.)

In reply to the entries earlier today concerning Alternative Right contributor Richard Hoste (here and here), a reader writes:

I just want you to know that Richard Hoste was a graduate student at Yale when Richard Spencer was an undergrad there. Spencer was simply a conservative before Hoste started to influence him. It was he who introduced Spencer to Kevin MacDonald, and now the two Richards are ideologically very close. Hoste wanted to do his Master’s on Jewish group behavior and had a falling out with his department. This must have influenced Spencer. Hoste has also been able to impress Peter Brimelow. Vdare donors called Brimelow threatening to cut off funding if he didn’t get rid of Hoste but Brimelow refused, seeing Hoste’s position on Israel as something he must defend on principle.

Thank you for showing what’s wrong with the paleoconservatives.

LA replies:

Thanks for this. Hoste was a grad student at Yale? In what field? I can’t see someone this stupid being at Yale.

Reader replies:

Anthropology. Hoste is really smart, albeit really weird. People who’ve met him comment on it. He became interested in MacDonald’s work and wanted to do his master’s degree on Jewish movements. Like I said, there was a falling out with his department. Spencer was shocked by this and may have started seeing Jewish conspiracies everywhere too.

LA replies:

Well, anti-Semitism, like liberalism, makes people stupid. Let’s say it has the practical effect of lowering a person’s IQ by one standard deviation.

I didn’t know that Brimelow had been publishing Hoste. Here are Hoste’s articles at Vdare. I heard the other day that Brimelow has announced he had lost a major donor or donors who had supplied a third of his funds. Here is his desperate plea for donations, where he says:

Within the last week, we learned that a major foundation, which has backed us since we began a decade ago, has abruptly denied us funding for this year.

We’ve lost close to a third of our budget and we’ve been plunged into an immediate cash crisis.

Given the conjunction of the two events, namely the major donors’ unhappiness over Hoste, and a major donor’s “abrupt” cut-off of one third of Brimelow’s funding, it seems a reasonable possibility that the loss of the donor is due to Brimelow’s refusal to cease publishing Hoste. It appears that Brimelow cares more about publishing Israel-haters and anti-Semites than he does about defending America from Third-World immigration.

I should add that we don’t know that what the reader has said is true. He may be mistaken; he may even be a plant in some kind of John Le Carre-esque plot. But when I asked him what was the basis for his knowledge, it seemed to be valid and he seemed to be sincere and truthful. His information seemed plausible enough to be posted.

LA continues:

In early March, Dennis Mangan wrote this baseless, disgusting, anti-Semitic statement:

Lawrence Auster has made it clear that he values Israel at least as much as he does his own country …

Given what we’ve heard about Brimelow, I wonder if Mangan will now write that “Peter Brimelow has made it clear that he cares about protecting Israel-haters and anti-Semites at least as much as he cares about protecting America from Third-World immigration.” Unlike what Mangan said about me, there would seem to be at least some factual basis for it.

LA writes:

If it is true, as the reader says, that Brimelow refused to stop publishing Hoste because he saw Hoste’s position on Israel as something he had to defend on principle, then it would likely also be the case that the reason Brimelow kept publishing Paul Craig Robert’s pathologically hate-mongering articles against neocons and Israel, notwithstanding the numerous complaints he has received about them, was that he saw Roberts’s positions on Israel and neocons as something he had to defend on principle. Thus Brimelow’s repeated excuses he made to various readers for his publishing all of Roberts’s columns no matter how insane they were, namely (a) that he had a personal loyalty and gratitude to Roberts and couldn’t possibly hurt his feelings by not publishing his hate articles, or (b) that he had no choice but to publish all of Roberts’ columns because they were syndicated and he had “paid” for them, were, as I always suspected, not true. As a commonsense understanding of human nature indicated all along, Brimelow published Roberts’s articles because he liked them. But he couldn’t honestly admit that this was the reason, without alienating his readers who were offended by Roberts’s articles and were asking him not to continue publishing them.

* * *

In connection with the above, I think it would be appropriate to post an exchange between Kidist Paulos Asrat and me that took place on April 17.

Kidist wrote:

You might be interested to know that Vdare is going through a financial crunch. Although I never know if Peter Brimelow is playing up the hype to get donations. But he reports at Vdare that a major donor has withdrawn its funds, and Vdare has lost 1/3 of its budget.

When Alternative Right was recently launched, Vdare announced that it was “a project of the Vdare foundation.”

The timing is interesting, to say the least. Some higher force is saying something.

LA replies:

Don’t be so mysterious. :-) Why is the timing interesting, and what is some higher force saying?

Kidist replied:

Regarding the previous fundraising—yes, I think they had similar problems in Christmas. But he’s much more dramatic about it now.

As for the timing and higher forces—don’t you think that all those strange posts on anti-Semitism, and also Vdare’s foray into the same via Paul Craig Roberts, are getting some feedback? Now Alt-Right has two (Hoste and MacDonald) who are regulars, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Roberts joins them soon. I don’t think the God of Israel can be too happy with that.

Also, you may be more powerful than you think (spiritually)! Part of the timing is the repeated attacks on you, and your pointing out those very anti-Semitic articles.

LA replies:

Well, this is an interesting hypothesis, that the anti-Semitism is connected with their funding troubles, but there’s no way we can know that it’s true. His financial difficulties could have causes completely unrelated to the anti-Semitism angle. But wasn’t there another big donor who bowed out around Christmas, triggering his big difficulties then? Are we to understand that yet another big donor has just bowed out now?

Kidist replied:

I’m speaking in a mystical sense. I think his Christmas funder bailed out because of the recession. This second one “abruptly” ended funding 1/3 of the budget—no reasons given according to Brimelow. This is a huge portion of a budget. Still, I’m just saying that his course of action has displeased the gods, so to speak.

Just a thought. :-) I don’t like making “spiritual” connections. We don’t know what God’s thoughts are. But, repeated big strikes like this is telling.

Another thought. I have always said that Numbers USA is a much more effective site for immigration information. Vdare has ended up being a kvetching site. Brimelow’s anti-Semitic writers—MacDonald and Roberts—are the ultimate in kvetchers. Less complaining and more action seems to work well for the successful Numbers USA. Why fund a kvetching site?

LA replies:

I thought that was what you were thinking, that it seems like some spiritual thing working itself out.

Kidist replied:

Yes, thanks for assessing it sanely! I try not to delve too much into spiritual conjecture. But, sometimes it is unavoidable.

[end of April 17 exchange]

* * *

M. Jose writes:

You wrote:

If it is true, as the reader says, that Brimelow refused to stop publishing Hoste because he saw Hoste’s position on Israel as something he had to defend on principle, then it would likely also be the case that the reason Brimelow kept publishing Paul Craig Robert’s pathologically hate-mongering articles against neocons and Israel, notwithstanding the numerous complaints he has received about them, was that he saw Roberts’s positions on Israel and neocons as something he had to defend on principle.

Well, except the two cases are somewhat different. In Roberts’s case the question was why Brimelow published everything that Roberts wrote, that is, why he didn’t pick-and-choose. In the case of Hoste, the issue is why he doesn’t simply can Hoste entirely. From what I can see, none of Hoste’s columns on VDARE are particularly offensive on antisemitic grounds, whatever he has written elsewhere. (He mentions “Israel” once, in terms of noting that Israelis face the same problems as white South Africans at the hands of aggrieved non-whites, and the term “Jew” once, referring to Ron Paul’s relative popularity amongst blacks (compared to other Republicans) to being “the most popular Jew in Yemen.”

I would also be cautious about this statement from the reader:

… seeing Hoste’s position on Israel as something he must defend on principle.

Is it possible that Brimelow is not defending the position on Israel per se, as much as he is saying that he won’t remove columnists in order to placate donors, on principle? He may be worried about the precedent that it would set if he suggests that VDARE can be swayed by donor pressure.

LA replies:

You’re making good points. But I still think the driving issue is Brimelow’s commitment to certain types of ideas and writers, not to some abstract principle of not letting himself be pushed around. It always comes down to certain types of writers that he won’t let himself be pushed around on.

Also, if the donors’ concern was not about anything being published at Vdare, why would they care enough to make an issue of it? Also, why would the donors make an issue out of Hoste, but not out of MacDonald, a far better known figure? Why make an issue out of Hoste, who, you say, did not publish anti-Semitic articles at Vdare, but not make an issue out of Roberts, who did?

M. Jose replies:

” … if the donors’ concern was not about anything being published at Vdare, why would they care enough to make an issue of it?”

I don’t know, other than they were outraged that that particular author would be published there. To be honest, I don’t have any evidence that anyone made an issue of it other than the reader you quoted in your posting, who seems to connect it with VDARE’s current funding troubles.

The following exchange is linked from a new entry, entitled “The Paleocon anti-Semitic Complex.”
April 20, 11:45 p.m.

Michael S. writes:

I know a major donor to Vdare and I can tell you that Paul Craig Roberts has been a problem from the start. Brimelow truly believes in anti-Semitism. He, Hoste, and Spencer are all members of the anti-Semitic Charles Martel Society and were at an event where Kevin MacDonald was awarded 10K for his work for “our people.” The disagreement between Brimelow and his donors is getting really bad. Brimelow wants to focus even more on Israel. Roberts retiring saved him a lot of headache, but now Brimelow wants to bring Roberts on as an “advisor.” It’s a symbolic role, but he’d do it to make a point. If Roberts turns the job down, Brimelow may bring Hoste or even Jared Taylor into the position.

I’m also told that Hoste volunteered to step down as the blogger of the HBD section at Alt-Right because of all the controversy he was drawing, but Spencer begged him to stay and offered to double his pay.

As a Jew who cares about the immigration restrictionist movement, I’m very worried.

M. Jose writes:

I don’t think it is entirely fair to group Paul Craig Roberts with Kevin MacDonald and Richard Hoste.

While he is extremely anti-Israel, he doesn’t, as far as I can tell, think that Jews are the major cause of America’s troubles or that Jews as a whole are engaged in a conspiracy to destroy the U.S.

Hoste and MacDonald not only seem to think this, they also think that the alleged Jewish plot, rather than being an accident of history, is endemic to Jewishness itself.

None of which is to defend his anti-Israel positions or his bizarre Trutherism. But I think that Hoste and MacDonald are in a bit of a different class.

LA replies:

That’s a fair point. And I don’t think I said anything that suggested that Roberts is like Hoste and MacDonald. At the same time, since we’re discussing all these people as members of a group, it is natural that we would associate them and their ideas together, and sometimes that may lead to an implication about a given individual that is not true.

For the record, prior to his December 2009 column, “For Palestinians, Every Day Is Kristallnacht,” I never said that Roberts is anti-Semitic. I did say that with that article, both Roberts and Vdare, which published it, had crossed the line from anti-Israelism to anti-Semitism.

These people, like the members of any group, have different views and do not all fit into the same mold. They have a mix of views with sufficient overlap that they form a working ideological faction. The title of an entry I posted tonight, “The Paleocon anti-Semitic complex,” conveys that idea. It’s a complex, not a simple unity. Some of the members of the complex are merely anti-neocon. Some are anti-Israel. Some are outright anti-Semitic. What do these three views have in common? Opposition to people and entities that are identifiably Jewish. While not all members of the complex are anti-Semitic, opposition to Jews, and thus, ultimately, anti-Semitism, is the cement that holds the various parts of the complex together, and is even its ruling principle. This is shown by group’s tacit hierarchical order, in which the members of the complex who are anti-Semitic are never criticized by other members for their anti-Semitism, while the members of the complex who are not anti-Semitic tacitly accept the anti-Semitism of their colleagues and don’t complain about it, or at least they don’t seriously do so. In many cases the non-anti-Semites defend their anti-Semitic confreres from the charge of being anti-Semitic. It would appear then that a minimal requirement for membership in the complex is, in descending order of activism, at least one of the following: (a) active defense of anti-Semitic members from the charge of anti-Semitism; (b) deference to anti-Semitic members and their anti-Semitism; or (c) silent non-criticism of anti-Semitic members and their anti-Semitism. While active support for, or at least silent non-criticism of, anti-Semitic members is a required condition of membership in the complex, criticism of members’ anti-Semitism is prohibited, and marks an individual as a non-member of the complex.

Anti-Semitism is thus the organizing idea of the Paleocon anti-Semitic Complex, affecting and controlling even those members who are not themselves anti-Semitic.

A reader writes:

One fact that your current theory-of-Brimelow may have difficulty with is his long-term, close collaboration with Ed Rubinstein. If Peter is actually anti-Semitic, would he really have the ongoing relationship with Rubinstein?

It’s not a matter of how one feels about individuals. A person may like Jews, or certain Jews, as individuals, but still have a problem with Jews as a people, or with Israel as a country, or even with the idea of Jewishness.

Every time someone is accused of being anti-Jewish, a Jewish friend of his will pop up to say, “It’s not true, because he’s friends with me.” An instructive example is the late Robert Novak saying, “Pat Buchanan is not anti-Semitic, because he’s friends with me.” Now Novak just happened to be an inveterate, kneejerk enemy of the state of Israel, as well as non-Jewish in personality and appearance. Yet untold numbers of Buchanan supporters would take Buchanan’s friendship with Novak as proof that Buchanan was not anti-Jewish or anti-Israel.

A reader writes from Europe:

Looking through history, we see no society that has successfully hosted a politically-active Jewish population without collapsing.

LA replies:

People who feel the way this reader feels ought to form anti-Semitic organizations and take a stand and fight for their anti-Semitic view in the political marketplace and see how they do with it. They should NOT mix up their anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism with, e.g., the movement to stop Third -World immigration, because when they do that, the anti-Jewish issue takes over and the immigration restrictionist movement is corrupted, distracted, and damaged. But one of the absolutely predictable marks of anti-Semites is that they cannot treat their concern about the Jews as one issue among others and put it in any rational perspective. It must be THE issue. Anti-Semitism is a pathology which ruins everything it touches, and will destroy any good cause by being associated with it.

And this is why I say to immigration restrictionists: do you care about restricting immigration? Then keep anti-Semitism out of it, and insist that the leaders keep anti-Semitism out of it, and don’t support leaders who make anti-Semitism a part of it.

People who are not anti-Semites and people for whom anti-Semitism is not a primary issue will, perhaps, hear what I’m saying. Those who are committed to anti-Semitism or to the belief that one should never criticize a fellow conservative who is anti-Semitic, will reject it.

April 21

LA continues:

I said above:

“[The anti-Semites] should NOT mix up their anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism with, e.g., the movement to stop Third -World immigration, because when they do that, the anti-Jewish issue takes over and the immigration restrictionist movement is corrupted, distracted, and damaged.”

A particularly bad aspect of this is that when people are attracted to a website that advances a good cause they believe in, say immigration restriction, and then discover that there are anti-Jewish or anti-Israel elements at that site that they normally would not be comfortable with, they swallow their objections because they don’t want to undermine the cause they believe in. And this becomes a kind of emotional blackmail. Supporters of immigration restriction are made to feel that they must not say anything about the anti-Israelism of certain leading immigration restrictionists because that would be “dividing the ranks.” In effect, the immigration restrictionist cause becomes a means of getting anti-Semitism / ant-Israelism accepted by conservatives.

Which raises a reasonable question: are some immigration restrictionists, by injecting anti-Israelism into their message, using the immigration restrictionist cause as a means of advancing the cause they really care about: opposition to Israel and Jews?

M. Jose replies to LA:

To clarify, I should also point out that I was not arguing that Roberts is not an anti-Semite (I haven’t really analyzed the question); I was just saying that MacDonald and Hoste were in a completely different class of anti-Semite than he would be in.

The main reason I brought this up was because I was thinking about your statement:

Also, if the donors’ concern was not about anything being published at Vdare, why would they care enough to make an issue of it? Also, why would the donors make an issue out of Hoste, but not out of MacDonald, a far better known figure? Why make an issue out of Hoste, who, you say, did not publish anti-Semitic articles at Vdare, but not make an issue out of Roberts, who did?

While this doesn’t deal with the MacDonald issue, it would explain why people found Hoste more objectionable than Roberts.

M. Jose continues:

It also occurred to me that if objections to Richard Hoste are the cause of donors de-funding VDARE, is it because VDARE publishes Hoste’s columns, or because VDARE sponsors his website, Alt-Right (something I was not aware of when I wrote my original responses)? I have a hard time believing that donors have left because Brimelow has published four non-offensive (on anti-Semitic grounds) columns by a guy who writes other stuff that is anti-Semitic. That people are objecting to his sponsorship of Hoste’s website makes a lot more sense than that they are objecting to his publishing a few columns.